Sensory Returns. Chapter 1: Athens – The City I Breathe
Written by Domenico Arcella
Each city carries its own unique scent. Each scent stirs a memory. And each memory leads us back to who we are.
Athens / Photo credit: Leonhard Niederwimmer, Unsplash
In this column, I want to try to tell the stories of the places I’ve traveled through, lived and loved—those that have left an indelible mark on my own story. I follow the feelings and memories that surface in me in that very moment. There is no fixed plan or schedule: only olfactory memory, and the guidance of heart and skin, leading my steps.
A few days ago, I found myself thinking more deeply than usual about how a perfume can reflect the emotional state of the person wearing it—sometimes even more than the way we dress. It all started with a simple question: “How do I feel today?”—prompted by a recent olfactory experience and a few light conversations with colleagues during a coffee break.
That simple question led me to consider something deeper: perfume does not only communicate with others, but also brings us back to ourselves through memory. It is invisible, yet incredibly powerful. You don’t see it like a piece of clothing, but it arrives before and lingers afterward. Above all, it connects to something profoundly intimate. This is exactly what makes perfume so difficult to define universally: what a fragrance represents for me is not necessarily the same for someone else.
Photo credit: Jim Niakaris, Unsplash
Perhaps it’s because the meaning of a perfume doesn’t lie within the fragrance itself, but in the encounter between that scent and one’s own experience. The same note can be a comfort for one person and a source of nostalgia for another. Often, what we think we are “expressing” is actually what we need at that very moment. We don’t always choose a perfume to tell others about us; sometimes we choose it simply to find ourselves.
This awareness brought me back to reflecting on olfactory memory. Unlike the other senses, smell is directly connected to the areas of the brain associated with emotions and memories. A scent can transport you back instantly, without filters or reasoning. It’s not a memory you reconstruct—it’s a memory that renews itself.
Following this invisible trace, my memory returned to Athens. Last year, around this time, I was there—a city I love, vibrant and full of energy. The spring sun already smelled of summer; the streets were crowded, and the air was thick with scents: jasmine in bloom, spices from the markets, freshly baked bread along the avenues, perfumeries on every corner. It’s no wonder the city is often considered one of the most “fragrant” in the world. Yet, beyond any label, what truly lingers is something else.
A year later, those scents resurface, bringing me back there vividly, almost unexpectedly. They are not just memories, but fragments of experience that come alive again. Perhaps this is the most delicate power of perfume: not merely to accompany moments, but to preserve them—and return them to us when we least expect it.
The morning smells of Greek coffee—strong, roasted, intense, almost tangible—awakening the senses. It is the scent of a walk through Plaka: neighborhood cafés opening onto the streets, coffee releasing warm, dark tendrils, while the lightly toasted sesame of koulouri mingles with the sweet, golden aroma of honeyed loukoumades.
Awake by Akro captures the energy of the morning: a dark, hot, smoky espresso with notes of coffee, lemon, green cardamom, and vetiver, evoking the essence of freshly brewed coffee. It isn’t gourmand in a sweet sense; it’s urban, almost like “black liquid,” like sipping an espresso standing up amid noise and light.
If Awake tells the story of morning energy, The Embrace by Navitus Perfumes evokes memory. It recalls a breakfast at Krinos, with toasted sesame and honey over golden pastries. Here, the coffee isn’t sharp, but gentle—softer than it is bitter, more of a comfort
Climbing toward the hill of the Areopagus, the sun beats down on the warm stone, and the air carries a dry, dusty scent that echoes the past. The aromas from the tavernas—oregano, grilled meat, olive oil—blend with the herbs and woods of the hillside, as if the memory of the place were breathing alongside everyday life.
Terroni by Orto Parisi conveys the warmth of the earth and the sun: roots, smoky woods, and vetiver intertwine with musk and tonka bean, evoking the strength of sun-scorched stone and the Mediterranean soil beneath your feet. Corsica Furiosa by Parfum d’Empire brings vitality to the landscape: tomato leaf, fresh greens, mastic, hay, lime, honey, and pepper recreate wild herbs warmed by the sun and stirred by the wind.
Cardinal by Heeley adds a meditative dimension: cistus labdanum, incense, and myrrh create a resinous depth, while ambergris, vetiver, and patchouli evoke ancient stone, as if time were suspended among the ruins.
In the late afternoon at sunset, the scent of nerantziès fills the streets of Exarchia and Mouseio. Bitter orange trees, in bloom between March and April, transform every corner into a suspended space. Colonia Pura by Acqua di Parma captures this atmosphere: bergamot and Italian orange, with petitgrain, bring a radiant clarity, while coriander, jasmine, and narcissus introduce a delicate floral touch. In the base, cedarwood, patchouli, and musk evoke the feel of warm stone and time standing still among the streets.
Nio by Xerjoffadds a different nuance: bergamot, cardamom, pink pepper, and nutmeg vibrate in the freshness of the streets. The heart of green leaves and jasmine links the verdancy of the vegetation with the sweetness of the flowers, while the base of amber, cedarwood, guaiac wood, and vetiver lends depth, warmth, and lightness, as if the sunset were slowly settling over rooftops and alleyways.
As evening falls through the streets of Psirri, the scent of white flowers—jasmine above all—blends with denser notes: a trace of smoke, marine hints, wine, and stone still holding the day’s warmth.À La Nuit by Serge Lutens captures this moment: jasmine melds with skin, warmth, and the evening air. Enveloping and hypnotic, like a fragrance drifting from an open window or lingering in alleyways where the night has already begun.
In that moment, everything feels closer: sounds, lights, people. The city becomes more than a place—it becomes a presence. Thought stretches beyond Psirri, toward all of Greece, toward a light that belongs not only to the city, but to its most ancient memory.
I think of the Everlasting, the “eternal” flower that has grown wild for millennia on sun-drenched slopes. Manos Gerakinis has transformed it into a fragrance: Immortelle. A kind of vegetal gold—strong and resilient—its scent of honey, spices, and warm woods seems suspended in time, able to hold on to what passes and make eternal what slips away.
Like the everlasting, even the most intense memories do not fade: they remain, even as everything around them changes, even as day dissolves into night. A golden thread connects past and present, emotions and places, memory and scent, transforming Greece—its cities, its stones, its light—into an experience that continues to live within us.
Perhaps this is the true power of perfume: it does not merely accompany our steps, but brings us back to ourselves, to the places we have loved, to the moments that have left their mark. This is how Athens—its scents, its stones, its light—continues to live on in memory and the senses, as an experience that is never exhausted but reawakens each time the scent of a city reconnects us with our memories and with ourselves.
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